Haunted Dreams
by fairchildss
Summary: Harry is haunted by nightmares and is unable to sleep, and one night at the Burrow he stumbles upon Ginny in the kitchen who is awake for the same reasons. Having not had the chance to really talk, Harry doesn't know where they stand in their relationship.


**This is my first fanfic that I'm publishing, and I'm really excited! The story behind this is that I had a wonderful dream about Harry and Ginny and I wanted to write it down and see where I could take the story. It's more of a one-shot really, but I might turn it into something longer! This takes place a few months after the war, and Harry is living at the Burrow with the Weasley's. Hope you enjoy!**

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Harry woke up sweating, his head pounding. The scar on his forehead didn't hurt; it hadn't hurt for months, not since Voldemort had died and that piece of his soul that had been in Harry had died with him. Voldemort was dead and the wizarding world was safer than it had been in years and decades, but Harry still had nightmares. Half of the time he could barely remember the nightmares, and he was glad for it. But they still haunted him, almost every night, and he knew that they would continue to haunt him for a long time. He hadn't told anyone, only because he didn't want to burden them, and it wasn't something he really wanted to talk about, not even with Ron and Hermione. And also because he was pretty certain he wasn't the only one who suffered from them.

More often than not, Harry's nightmares bore the faces of the people he loved and had lost; reminding him of the horrors they had endured and suffered at the hands of the enemy; reminding him of the fact that he would never see them in this life again. Sirius, Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Dobby, his parents… Knowing that their lives had been taken from them far too early, that they would never get to live the life they had once wanted for themselves was the worst part. Even if Harry knew that they had died trying to make the world a better place, he would never forget that fact that while he was still alive and breathing, they were not.

Harry lay in bed, trying to push the thoughts from his mind. Ron was snoring loudly, deep in slumber, and Harry found himself wondering what Ron was dreaming. Were his dreams as terrible and haunted as his own? He didn't want to know.

Harry threw the covers off him and sat up in his bed. He didn't know what time it was, but glancing out the window he was sure it was still the middle of the night. Harry didn't want to go back to sleep, didn't want to wake up from another nightmare, so he slipped from his bed, grabbed his wand and glasses from the nightstand and walked across Ron's room, opening the door as soundless as he could. He didn't want to wake Ron up, didn't want to explain why he was sneaking out in the middle of the night. Harry stepped out in the hall and closed the door to Ron's bedroom; _their_ bedroom.

Harry had been staying with the Weasley's at the Burrow for the past few months as he didn't have anywhere else to go. He couldn't go back to the Dursley's because the house was now empty, and it had never been his true home anyway. He couldn't bear living on his own in Sirius old home at Grimmauld Place, which was now owned by Harry himself. It was huge and dark and dusty, and only reminded Harry of the absence of his godfather. And Hogwarts, which had been Harry's real home for the past six years, was the one place he could no longer go back to. He was finished with school; he and Ron had both decided they wouldn't go back to finish their seventh and final year. Hermione and Ginny on the other hand had both gone back, but they had agreed that the school was and never would be the same.

So Harry had gone to live at the Burrow with the people that were the closest to him as a family. He would find his own home eventually, but right now he couldn't stand the thought of being alone, and he knew he needed people around him in order for him to heal.

Harry crept down the creaky stairs, heading for the kitchen to get a glass of water and to try and soothe the pounding in his head. He was just about to light his wand when he saw light already coming from the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks on the stairs, half tempted to turn on his heel and go back to his room, but he decided against it. Harry didn't want to go back to bed, and talking to the person in the kitchen would be a better alternative than to see the red eyes of death himself or the marred faces of his beloved ones in his dreams.

So instead he put his wand in his back pocket and continued down the stairs and as he rounded the doorframe to the kitchen, he saw that it wasn't just anyone standing there. It was Ginny. She was perched atop the kitchen counter, stuffing something in her mouth, her long, tousled red hair falling across both sides of her face.

Harry stopped at the frame of the missing door, watching her, suddenly very happy that he decided to leave his bed in the middle of the night. His heart nearly skipped a beat at the sight of Ginny, and any other thoughts he had in his head disappeared, as well as the pounding in his head. It was a wonder, Harry thought, how the sight of Ginny could immediately make him think of nothing else but her. It was always the case, as soon as they were in the same room together, Harry could barely pay attention to much else but Ginny and the way she smelled, and moved and laughed and the way she looked at him.

They hadn't had much chance to really talk or hang out just the two of them with everything going on and with Ginny being away at Hogwarts most of the time. He didn't really know where they stood, or if Ginny even still felt the same way he did, if she still wanted to be with him after everything that had happened in the past year. The only thing Harry did know was that when he wasn't having terrible nightmares, his dreams consisted mostly of Ginny and of a life with all the things he wanted with her.

"Are you going to stand there all night?" Ginny said suddenly, not even looking in Harry's direction. He hadn't thought that she had noticed him standing there, and now he felt stupid for not saying anything.

He glanced away from her and moved over to the sink, taking a glass and filling it with water. "What are you doing awake?" he asked, leaning against the counter across from her.

"Eating," Ginny said with a smirk. Harry dared a look at her, and she was staring right back at him now. She had circles under her eyes and Harry knew then much too well why she was really awake. "Nightmares. I couldn't sleep." She put down the empty wrapper of a chocolate bar next to her and looked down at her hands.

"Me too," Harry said, and it wasn't out of pity or to make her feel better, but because he knew that they understood each other perfectly.

"Do you think they will ever stop?" Ginny looked at him again, sadness and tiredness in her eyes.

"I don't know," Harry answered honestly. "Maybe someday. When we're a little bit less broken, perhaps."

Ginny didn't look entirely convinced by his words. "Perhaps."

Harry took a sip from his glass and set it down. He moved over to Ginny, his nerves tingling at the fact that he was now so close to her, standing less than a foot away from her. He dared the move because he longed with the need to touch her, to comfort her, to make her feel better. She didn't flinch or move or push him away, and he took it as a sign that she didn't mind his closeness. He could feel her eyes on him, but he looked at her hands in her lap instead, and he moved his own hands over hers, feeling the warmth of her. He squeezed her hands in a reassuring gesture, as if to tell her that he was there, that he wasn't going anywhere, that they were there together and that's all that mattered.

He looked up into her brown eyes and there were tears there now, silent tears running down her face. "George won't stop screaming. I don't want to go back to sleep."

Harry's stomach turned. For months now, ever since Fred died, George had been screaming his brother's name in his sleep. Since George could barely handle being in his and Fred's room, he had moved into Bill and Charlies old room which was on the same floor as Ginny's, and every night that George would scream, Ginny would hear it through the walls.

"Then we won't," Harry found himself saying, still looking up into her face. He was still holding Ginny's hands in one of his own, but with the other he reached up and drew her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Even with tears in her eyes, circles underneath them and redness in her cheeks, Ginny looked beautiful.

For every day that he hadn't been with her during his hunt for the horocruxes, he had beaten himself up about the fact that he hadn't noticed Ginny earlier, before his sixth year. That he hadn't noticed her beauty and the way she could make him laugh without trying, the way she understood him like no one else did, not even Ron and Hermione. It was his own stupid fault that he had had so little time with her. He hoped now, the same way he had after they first got together, that they would have all the time in the world together, if that was what she wanted too.

Ginny leaned down towards Harry then, their foreheads touching ever so slightly. And without thinking he stepped closer, closing the small space between them, and then their lips met for the first time in what felt like forever.

The kiss was tender and calm at first, and Harry thought that because it had been so long since they had last done this, he wouldn't know what to do. But the thought was fleeting and then gone altogether as Ginny moved her hands up to his face and then to his neck and through his hair and drew him closer to her. His own hands wandered along her back, and his mind took him back to the time Ginny had kissed him on his seventeenth birthday, with his hands on her back and in her hair, the last kissed they had shared until now.

The kiss deepened and Harry could taste the salt from Ginny's tears mixed with chocolate in her mouth, and then tongue was meeting tongue and Harry could think of nothing else but Ginny and the feel of her and how he would be content if he could hold her like this forever. For the first time in months, maybe even years, Harry felt truly alive.

How many times had he imagined this and wished for this in all those months he and Ginny had been apart? Had she wished for it too?

They broke apart, both trying to catch their breath, still holding each other close, foreheads touching. Harry wiped a tear from Ginny's cheek and she smiled at him, and he could do nothing else but smile back at her.

"So I take it there was no Veela wherever it was that you were off to during all those months," Ginny said jokingly, mocking her own words from so long ago.

Harry laughed. "Dating opportunities were pretty thin on the ground," he said, echoing his own answer. "Even so, there was never anyone else. There could never be anyone else."

"There's the silver lining I've been looking for." Ginny smiled playfully. "Good answer."

She kissed him again, wrapping her legs around Harry's back. Harry felt a strange happiness running through his veins, and all that awkwardness he might have thought was between them was now gone, replaced with a feeling of comfortable rightness. Being with Ginny felt right, and it was a feeling he never wanted to slip away or let go of.

Ginny drew away, and Harry rested his hands on her legs.

"I feel dizzy," she said then and made a gesture as if she wanted to slip of the counter.

"Are you feeling okay?" Harry moved away so she could slip to the floor, suddenly worried. Was it something he did?

Ginny laughed silently. "I feel fine, Harry. I'm saying you make me feel dizzy. It's a good thing." She added the last part when she saw the confusion on Harry's face. "I'm happy."

"Oh," was all Harry could manage to say. Did she have any clue the things she made him feel too?

Ginny wrapped her arms around Harry, resting her head on his chest. Harry hugged her back, and they stood there in the kitchen of the Burrow in the middle of the night embracing each other. He was almost a head taller than her, and he kissed the top of her head, breathing in the lavender smell from her hair.

"You make me feel dizzy too," Harry whispered into her hair. "I missed you."

"You better have," Ginny's voice was sleepy, and even though he didn't want to move an inch from where they were standing, and even though he had never felt more awake, Harry thought it might be best they go back to bed. "And I missed you too."

"We should probably go back to bed, before someone catches us standing here."

"So what if they do? I don't care." Ginny lifted her head and looked up at Harry, mischief in her eyes. "And don't tell me you're tired."

"I've never been more awake, actually," said Harry truthfully. "But you should get some sleep."

Ginny untangled herself from Harry. "Fine."

She grabbed her lit up wand from the kitchen table and took Harry's hand in her free one, leading him out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the first floor. She stopped outside of her closed bedroom door and glanced at the door down the hall, where George slept in Charlie and Bill's old room. It was quiet, and Harry hadn't heard any screams coming from inside the room for a while.

Ginny hesitated before she opened her door, chewing at her lip. She still held Harry's hand and he didn't want her to let go, didn't want to climb up the rest of the stairs to his own room that he shared with Ron. As if she could read his mind, Ginny said, "Will you stay with me? Just for tonight."

Harry wasn't sure that was such a good idea, and he didn't think that Ron would approve once he woke up and realized Harry was gone from his bed only to be found in Ginny's. Or Mr. and Mrs. Weasley for that matter.

Ginny saw the hesitation in his face. "I don't want to be alone, and with Hermione not being here, it gets empty in my room. Silly, I know, but just for tonight it would be great to… not be alone."

He didn't really need a reason to follow Ginny into her room and spend the night holding her in his arms, because it was what he _wanted_ to do. What he needed was a reason _not_ to follow her into her room, and really, he had plenty of reasons. But somehow they didn't matter, because Ginny was standing there, asking him to stay with her, wanting him to stay with her, knowing very well that he would have to share her bed. Nothing mattered because this was Ginny, and Harry wanted nothing more than for Ginny to be happy and for her to feel safe, and if that meant him staying with her even though he ought not to, he would do it.

So Harry nodded, and together they went into Ginny's room and closed the door behind them.


End file.
